As he prepares to leave the ruling Politburo, China’s prime minister warns parliament of troubles ahead

CHINA'S prime minister, Wen Jiabao, may be glad he is entering his final year in office. In a two-hour speech on March 5th at the opening of the annual session of China's parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC), Mr Wen spoke of “new problems” besetting China's economy, from high prices to slowing growth. But his problem might lie in convincing citizens that his promised efforts to build a “harmonious” China have made progress.

Mr Wen's state-of-the-nation address was his penultimate as prime minister, but his last as a member of the ruling Politburo. He and President Hu Jintao will step down after a five-yearly Communist Party congress in the autumn. At next year's NPC (a rubber-stamp affair that usually lasts about ten days), Mr Wen is expected to hand over to his deputy, Li Keqiang. The presidency will almost certainly be passed to the current vice-president, Xi Jinping. In his speech, Mr Wen reminded almost 3,000 hand-picked delegates that this was his last year, and called for diligent work to “satisfy the people”.

This will be a lot tougher than meeting the lower-than-usual target of 7.5% growth this year that Mr Wen proposed (see article). More than any other prime minister since Zhou Enlai (who held the job for 26 years until his death in 1976), Mr Wen has tried hard to cultivate a man-of-the-people image. At a press conference after his appointment in 2003, Mr Wen boasted that he had visited 1,800 of China's 2,000-plus counties, and that this had helped him understand people's lives. “I know what they expect…I will live up to their trust,” he said. Their expectations, however, may have exceeded his capacity.

The rest of the world has marvelled at China's double-digit growth rates for most of the past decade, and millions of people have become richer. But many grumble that Mr Hu and Mr Wen have made less progress with their pledges to build a “harmonious society” in a way that pays more attention to people's welfare and the natural environment. The gap between rich and poor has continued to widen. Outbreaks of unrest, many of them the result of land grabs by local-government officials, are increasingly frequent. Migrant workers from the countryside, who fill most blue-collar jobs in urban areas, are usually denied welfare benefits enjoyed by other city-dwellers.

Polls suggest that many ordinary Chinese are feeling uneasy. In January a report by the Capital University of Economics and Business in Beijing found that the city's “happiness index” had been declining for four years. Worries about income were cited as the main reason for the drop. A survey published in the same month by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences showed that urban residents felt less confident that they would get richer than they felt about prospects for the economy generally (see chart).

Mr Wen highlighted some achievements. Spending on health care has received a boost since efforts to provide insurance for all were stepped up in 2009. But the World Bank and the Development Research Centre (DRC), a Chinese government think-tank, in a report in February, said that government spending on health, at around 2.5% of GDP, is still lower than average among the upper-middle-income countries with which China is now categorised. In his speech Mr Wen pledged that government spending on education would reach 4% of GDP for the first time (up from around 2.5% in 2003). A budget report submitted to the NPC said that such spending by the central government had risen by 27.5% last year. Mr Wen did not remind his audience, however, that China promised in 1993 it would spend 4% of GDP on education by 2000.

By the end of this year, Mr Wen said, all of rural China would be covered by a government-funded pension scheme that officials began rolling out in 2009. Rural pensioners receive a minimum of 55 yuan ($8.70) a month, which for the poorest families is a welcome boost. Mr Wen said rural incomes last year rose faster than those of urban residents for a second year in a row. They grew by 11.4% in real terms, the fastest rate since 1985. A considerable proportion of rural income comes from migrant labour in the cities. An official plan issued last month calls for increases in the minimum wage of at least 13% a year to 2015.

Such measures could help to narrow wage differences between urban and rural areas (as will a diminishing supply of surplus rural labour). Mr Wen deviated slightly from the wording of last year's five-year plan, which had called for a “gradual” narrowing of the income gap. He said the government would “quickly” reverse the widening trend and ensure that income distribution is governed by “proper standards”. He did not say how, although growing upward pressure on blue-collar wages will certainly help (see article).

The rich-poor gap is clearly an embarrassment to Mr Wen's government (as it was to the preceding one). Caixin, a magazine, reported in January that this year the government would again publish no estimate of the Gini coefficient, a measurement of inequality commonly used around the world. The last time such a figure was officially released, it said, was in 2000. The coefficient then was 0.412 (on a scale of 0, where everyone has the same income, to 1, where one person receives all of it). America's coefficient at that time was very similar at 0.408, but India's was much lower at 0.32. Some Chinese scholars believe China's is now higher than 0.5. The World Bank-DRC report says China is among the most unequal countries in Asia.

During the NPC Bo Xilai, the party chief of Chongqing, a region in the south-west, used the issue in an apparent attempt to revive his tarnished image (a political ally of his had fled to the American consulate in Chengdu last month, emerging a day later to be led away by Chinese security officials). Mr Bo pointedly told a group of delegates that it was possible to have fair wealth distribution and fast growth at the same time. Alone among Chinese provincial-level governments, Chongqing has set a target for reducing its Gini coefficient.

Few Chinese pay attention to the NPC's discussions, despite efforts by official media to enliven coverage with alluring pictures (see top photo). Internet users have been more interested in examining photographs of the wealthiest delegates, some of whom have flaunted their riches by wearing expensive clothing to the meetings. Hurun Report, a company which tracks China's wealthy, said the net worth of the 70 richest NPC delegates—many of whom are also prominent businesspeople—rose by $11.5 billion in 2011.